Supplement Company Closed in Doping Scandal
Wednesday, 23rd April 2008 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
China's State Food and Drug Administration has said that Auspure, the company blamed by Greek weightlifting coach Christos Iakovou for his athletes' positive drug tests, is not registered as a drug producer, and that the company has now been closed.Forward movement on the Greek weightlifting doping scandal is on hold, as the coach and players prepare for their court appearances during the first week of May. The eleven athletes tested positive for banned substances in March and the results were made public earlier this month.
Iakovou resigned his job, but not before fingering Auspure Biotechnology, a Shanghai-based nutritional supplement supplier, as the guilty party. Iakovou's attorney said he had an e-mail from Auspure accepting blame for tainted vitamins.
Plenty of questions, which may or may not be answered in the upcoming hearings, remain in this sad saga: Did the athletes know what they were putting in their bodies? Did Auspure jack the substances up at the request of Iakovou or did the company get sloppy with its quality control? Or did the athletes acquire their banned substances in another place altogether?
A quick search of the United States Food and Drug Administration's online records reveals that Auspure products were denied entry to the country multiple times because they were deemed impure. If the athletes were indeed doped by a Chinese lab without their knowledge, it still looks like Iakovou failed to do his due diligence and shirked his responsibility to look out for the health of his athletes.
Tags: doping, Greek, Olympics, weightlifting